Sunnyvale Demographics

Sunnyvale is in Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay area of Northern California. It is known as one of the most prominent cities of the Silicon Valley, the technology hub of the country and the world. Sunnyvale ranks the seventh most heavily populated city in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 2010 Census reported the city's population at 140,095.

Sunnyvale is surrounded by San Jose, Mountain View, Los Altos, Cupertino, and Santa Clara. El Camino Real runs through the city and Highways 101, 280 and 85 connects the city to the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sunnyvale is an important part of the Silicon Valley and has headquarters of several high-tech companies located in the city. These include Maxim Integrated Products, Juniper Networks, Fortinet, Palm, AMD, NetApp, Spansion, Yahoo!, AppliedMicro and Ariba.

Sunnyvale was historically the home of several aerospace/defense companies. Today Lockheed Martin has a major facility in Sunnyvale, and Honeywell, Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems - Marine Systems, Finisar, and Spirent have offices here in Sunnyvale.

Tracing Sunnyvale’s history from the original Ohlone inhabitants, the arrival of the Spanish in 1770 and its agricultural roots gives us a good view into how the Santa Clara valley developed as a suburban community. There is as much an influx of new residents as there are people leaving the area.

Population

In 1920 the population was 1,675, in 2010; 90 years later the population was 140,081. The population quadrupled in 1960 from 1950s during the aerospace industry boom in the valley.

The 2010 United States Census recorded a population of 140,081 for the city of Sunnyvale. The population density was 6,173.9 people per square mile.

The racial makeup of Sunnyvale was 43.0% White or Caucasian, 2.0% African American, 0.5% Native American, 40.9% Asian, 0.5% Pacific Islander, 8.7% from other races, and 4.5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race was 18.9% of the total population.

The Census reported that 99.4% of the population lived in households, 0.3% lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 0.3% were institutionalized.

There was a total of 53,384 households, out of which 34.9% of households had children under the age of 18 living in them. The average household size was 2.61. The average family size was 3.15.

The age demographic of the population showed that 22.4% of all inhabitants were under the age of 18, 6.7% were aged 18 to 24, 36.3%, the majority were aged 25 to 44, 23.4% were aged 45 to 64, and 11.2% were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35.6 years.

Out of the 55,791 housing units 48.0% were owner-occupied and 52.0% were occupied by people who rented. The homeowner vacancy rate was low at 1.1% while the rental vacancy rate was at 4.4%. 49.2% of the population lived in owner-occupied housing units and 50.2% lived in rental housing units.